"Assessment should be deliberately designed to improve and educate student performance, not merely to
audit as most school tests currently do."
--Grant Wiggins, EdD., president and director of programs, Relearning by Design, Ewing, New Jersey
Why Is Assessment Important?
Supporting student learning demonstrates their understanding
Assessment is an integral part of instruction, as it determines whether or not the goals of education are being
met. Assessment affects decisions about grades, placement, advancement, instructional needs, curriculum,
and, in some cases, funding. Assessment inspires us to ask these hard questions: "Are we teaching what we
think we are teaching?" "Are students learning what they are supposed to be learning?" "Is there a way to
teach the subject better, thereby promoting better learning?"
Today's students need to know not only the basic reading and arithmetic skills, but also skills that will allow
them to face a world that is continually changing. They must be able to think critically, to analyze, and to make
inferences. Changes in the skills base and knowledge our students need require new learning goals; these new
learning goals change the relationship between assessment and instruction. Teachers need to take an active
role in making decisions about the purpose of assessment and the content that is being assessed.
Discussion points:
In an Edutopia.org interview, Grant Wiggins, a nationally recognized assessment expert, shared his thoughts
on performance assessments, standardized tests, and more. Click here to read the interview, and reflect on his
responses to:
1. What distinctions do you make between "testing" and "assessment"?
Our line of argument is that testing is a small part of assessment. It needs to be part of the picture. Many
people who are anti-testing end up sounding anti-evaluation and anti-measurement. A good test has a role to
play. The language that we like to use is, it's an audit. It's a snapshot. You don't run your business for the audit.
You want more than a snapshot, you want a whole family album. But the audit and the snapshot have a place
in the larger picture.
What can the test do that more complex, performance-based, project-based things can't do? Look for discrete
knowledge and skill for the individual student. Many projects, because they're so collaborative, end up making
you wonder, well, what about the individual student? What does the individual student know?
For instance, in some state-based, performance-based assessment, they always had a parallel paper-andpencil test for the individual student so that you had enough data on the individual. A different way to say it -and this is what scientists and researchers say -- is triangulate the information. Match the quiz against the
project, against the PowerPoint® presentation. Now what's the whole picture say? So, what we would say is
"testing" is one piece of a portfolio.
2. What is authentic assessment and why is it important?
Authentic assessment, to me, is not meant to be the charged phrase, or jargony phrase that it has come to be
for a lot of people. When we first started using it fifteen years ago, we merely meant to signify authentic work
that big people actually do as opposed to fill-in-the-blanks, paper-and-pencil, multiple-choice, short-answer
quiz, school-based assessment. So it's authentic in the sense [that] it's real. It's realistic. If you go into the work
place, they don't give you a multiple-choice test to see if you're doing your job. They have some performance
assessment, as they say in business.
Having said that, there is a misunderstanding. People say, "Well, if it's not authentic, it can't possibly be a good
assessment." We never said that. We never implied it. There's a lot of authentic work that doesn't make for
good assessment because it's so messy and squishy and it involves so many different people and so many
variables that you can't say with any certainty, "Well, what did that individual student know about those
particular objectives in this complex project that occurred over a month?" So there's a place for unauthentic,
non-real-world assessments. We're just making the distinction that you shouldn't leave school not knowing
what big people actually do.
3. Why is it important that teachers consider assessment before they begin planning lessons or projects?
One of the challenges in teaching is designing, and to be a good designer you have to think about what you're
trying to accomplish and craft a combination of the content and the instructional methods, but also the
assessment. And one of the things that we've done over the past years in working with teachers is share with
them how important it is to say, "What are you going to assess? What's evidence of the goals that you have in
mind?" Otherwise your teaching can end up being hit-or-miss.
We call it backward design. Instead of jumping to the activities -- '"Oh, I could have kids do this, oh, that'd be
cool" -- you say, "Well, wait a minute." Before you decide exactly what you're going to do with them, if you
achieve your objective, what does it look like? What's the evidence that they got it? What's the evidence that
they can now do it, whatever the "it" is? So you have to think about how it's going to end up, what it's going to
look like. And then that ripples back into your design, what activities will get you there. What teaching moves
will get you there?
4. How do you assess project-based learning?
It all starts with, well, what are our goals? And how does this project support those goals and how are we
assessing in light of those goals? So, you would expect to see for any project a scoring guideline, a rubric, in
which there are clear links to the project, to some criteria and standards that we value that relate to some
overarching objective -- quite explicitly, that we're aiming for as teachers.
Sometimes we run into the problem that the project is so much a creature of the student's interest that
there's no question that lovely learning occurs, but we sort of lose sight of the fact that now it's completely
out of our control. We don't even know what it's really accomplishing in terms of our goals other than the kid
is learning a lot and doing some critical and creative work.
What we have to do is realize that even if we give this kid free reign to do really cool projects, it's still got to fit
within the context of some objectives, standards, and criteria that we bring to it, and frame the project in so
that we can say by the end, "I have evidence. I can make the case that you learned something substantial and
significant that relates to school objectives."
5. How can technology support and enhance assessment?
Once we get beyond the idea that assessment is more than just quizzes and tests -- and that it's the
documentation of whereby you make this case that the student has done something significant -- this body of
evidence, if we want to stick with that judicial metaphor, proves the student actually learned something.
Technology is an obvious partner because whether it's on a CD-ROM, floppies, or an old-fashioned technology
like video cameras or even overheads, the student is bringing together visual, three-dimensional, and paperand-pencil work. We want to be able to document and have a trace of what the student has accomplished and
how the student got there.
Having said that, I think sometimes technology is overused and we don't think carefully enough about the
evidence we need to give the grade, put something on the transcript, and track that information over time.
Many well-intentioned people say, "Let's have student portfolios of the student's work K-12." Well, that's fine
for the student, but there's hardly another human being other than the kid's family that wants to wade
through all that.
And that's actually another role of technology: It's a good database system -- information management,
storage, and retrieval whereby we say, "I don't want to look through the whole portfolio. I want to just see
some samples, some rubrics to get a sense of the student's current level of performance." Tracking
information over time through technology is actually an important part of it as well.
6. How do you respond to the argument that teachers don't have enough time to design and conduct
authentic or performance-based assessments?
One of the criticisms often leveled at alternative forms of assessment -- whether we call them performance,
portfolio, authentic, real-world, or project-based, -- is they're too time intensive, they're too expensive. It's too
big of a hassle. What's the payoff? What's the cost benefit?
I can understand that argument at the state level. The state is in the audit business. And one of the things I
think we've learned over the years is that given their need to save money, to not be too intrusive, to make it
reliable as an assessment, then they may have to not do some of this. But many of those arguments that the
critics make don't hold up at the district level at all. On the contrary, it's not very expensive. You've got all your
own local people who are in the business of assessing. It's not inappropriate or a waste of time because you
can't meet the standards without doing performance-based assessment.
7. Standardized tests, such as the SAT, are used by schools as a predictor of a student's future success. Is this
a valid use of these tests?
Standardized testing has a role to play as an audit, but one of the things that many policymakers and parents
forget, or don't know, is that these tests have a very narrow focus and purpose as audits. They're just trying to
find out if you really learned the stuff you learned in school.
Whether these tests predict future performance or success -- they do not. Even with the SAT, ETS and the
College Board are quite clear about what it does and does not predict. It just predicts freshman grade point
average in the first semester. That's all. And there's plenty of studies to show that grades in college don't
correlate with later success.
So, one of the things that people get in trouble with is assessment. It's like a bad game of telephone.
Remember the game you played as a kid? What starts out as a perfectly intelligible sentence ends up being
some wild distorted thing by the end.
Ten or fifteen years ago, the Secretary of Education was having wall charts about each state's SAT
performances -- as if that was a measure of school and school-system success. But the SAT was invented as an
aptitude test, not an achievement test linked to curricula. It was just about general intelligence. Let's be very
careful about what we're making claims about, what these assessment results do and don't mean. Most state
and national tests are predicting very, very narrow results about certain types of school performance. That's
all.
When assessment works best, it does the following:
Provides diagnostic feedback
 What is the student's knowledge base?
 What is the student's performance base?
 What are the student's needs?
 What has to be taught?
Helps educators set standards
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What performance demonstrates understanding?
What performance demonstrates knowledge?
What performance demonstrates mastery?
Evaluates progress
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How is the student doing?
What teaching methods or approaches are most effective?
What changes or modifications to a lesson are needed to help the student?
Relates to a student's progress
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What has the student learned?
Can the student talk about the new knowledge?
Can the student demonstrate and use the new skills in other projects?
Motivates performance
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For student self-evaluation:
Now that I'm in charge of my learning, how am I doing?
Now that I know how I'm doing, how can I do better?
What else would I like to learn?
For teacher self-evaluation:
What is working for the students?
What can I do to help the students more?
In what direction should we go next?
What Are Some Types of Assessment?
Alternatives to traditional standardized tests.
In the early theories of learning, it was believed that complex higher-order thinking skills were acquired in
small pieces, breaking down learning into a series of prerequisite skills. After these pieces were memorized,
the learner would be able to assemble them into complex understanding and insight -- the puzzle could be
arranged to form a coherent picture. Today, we know learning requires that the learner engage in problemsolving to actively build mental models. Knowledge is attained not just by receiving information, but also by
interpreting the information and relating it to the learner's knowledge base. What is important, and therefore
should be assessed, is the learner's ability to organize, structure, and use information in context to solve
complex problems.
Standardized Assessment
Almost every school district now administers state-mandated standardized tests. Every student at a particular
grade level is required to take the same test. Everything about the test is standard -- from the questions
themselves, to the length of time students have to complete it (although some exceptions may be made for
students with learning or physical disabilities), to the time of year in which the test is taken. Throughout the
country, and with the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (which requires research-based assessment),
student performance on these tests has become the basis for such critical decisions as student promotion
from one grade to the next, and compensation for teachers and administrators.
Standardized tests should not be confused with the standards movement, which advocates specific grade-level
content and performance standards in key subject areas. Often, in fact, standardized tests are not aligned with
state and district content standards, causing considerable disconnect between what is being taught and what
is being tested.
The questions then become: What is evidence-based assessment? Is it standardized tests? Is it portfolios? If
portfolios are a part of evidence-based assessment, what else is necessary? Reflections? Work samples? Best
work?
"Assessment should be deliberately designed to improve and educate student performance, not merely to
audit as most school tests currently do."
--Grant Wiggins, EdD., president and director of programs, Relearning by Design, Ewing, New Jersey
Alternative Assessment
Alternative assessment, often called authentic or performance assessment, is usually designed by the teacher
to gauge students' understanding of material. Examples of these measurements are open-ended questions,
written compositions, oral presentations, projects, experiments, and portfolios of student work. Alternative
assessments are designed so that the content of the assessment matches the content of the instruction.
Effective assessments give students feedback on how well they understand the information and on what they
need to improve, while helping teachers better design instruction. Assessment becomes even more relevant
when students become involved in their own assessment. Students taking an active role in developing the
scoring criteria, self-evaluation, and goal setting, more readily accept that the assessment is adequately
measuring their learning.
Authentic assessment can include many of the following:
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Observation
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Essays
Interviews
Performance tasks
Exhibitions and demonstrations
Portfolios
Journals
Teacher-created tests
Rubrics
Self- and peer-evaluation
How Do Rubrics Help?
How students and teachers understand the standards against which work will be measured.
Rubrics are multidimensional sets of scoring guidelines that can be used to provide consistency in evaluating
student work. They spell out scoring criteria so that multiple teachers, using the same rubric for a student's
essay, for example, would arrive at the same score or grade. Rubrics are used from the initiation to the
completion of a student project. They provide a measurement system for specific tasks and are tailored to
each project, so as the projects become more complex, so do the rubrics.
Eeva Reeder extols the power behind using scoring rubrics:
"It demystifies grades, and most importantly, helps students see that the whole object of schoolwork is
attainment and refinement of problem-solving and life skills."
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let students know what is expected of them.
demystify grades by clearly stating, in age-appropriate vocabulary, the expectations for a project.
help students see that learning is about gaining specific skills (both in academic subjects and in problem-solving
and life skills).
give students the opportunity to do self-assessment to reflect on the learning process.
help a teacher authentically monitor a student's learning process and develop and revise a lesson plan.
provide a way for a student and a teacher to measure the quality of a body of work. When a student's
assessment of his or her work and a teacher's assessment don't agree, they can schedule a conference to let the
student explain his or her understanding of the content and justify the method of presentation.
Types of Rubrics
Team Rubric
A team rubric is a guideline that lets each team member know what is expected of him or her. For example, a
team rubric
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contains detailed descriptions for tasks that will be done while the students are working as a team.
states acceptable degrees of behavior.
defines the consequences for a team member who is not participating.
lists actions or tasks required of each team member for the completion of a successful project, such as the
following:
o Did the person participate in the planning process?
o How involved was each member?
o Was the team member's work to the best of his or her ability?
o Shows the quantitative value of the behaviors or actions.
"For as long as assessment is viewed as something we do 'after' teaching and learning are over, we will fail to
greatly improve student performance, regardless of how well or how poorly students are currently taught or
motivated."
--Grant Wiggins, EdD., president and director of programs, Relearning by Design, Ewing, New Jersey
Project Rubric
A project rubric lists the requirements for the completion of a project-based-learning lesson. It is usually some
sort of presentation: a word-processed document, a poster, a model, a multimedia presentation, or a
combination of presentations.
The teacher can create a project rubric, or students can collaborate, helping set goals for the project and
suggest how their work should be evaluated. Together, the teacher and the students can answer the following
questions:
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What is the quality of the work?
How do you know the content is accurate?
How well was the presentation delivered?
How well was the presentation designed?
What was the main idea?
Sample Rubrics
Look at these rubrics from several Web sites, which show team rubrics and project rubrics for various subjects
and grade levels.
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Collaboration Rubric
Evaluation for Group Music Project
Report Rubric
Math Rubrics
After you've reviewed the sites, discuss the following:
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What do you think of the different styles?
Do they meet your expectations of rubrics for the designated grade levels? Why, or why not?
Which one most closely suits your vision of what you will need? Why?
Resources
1. Have participants read the article "Toward Genuine Accountability: The Case for a New State Assessment
System" and then follow these steps:
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Ask participants, "What did you think of the analogy Grant Wiggins makes between basketball and state testing?
Explain."
Have the class discuss the blueprint Wiggins suggests for state assessment, and ask participants, "Do you agree
or disagree? How would you improve it?"
Have the class discuss Wiggins's proposal for a state performance system and * the five guiding principles that
underlie his proposal.
Direct participants to take a position, either pro or con, for the proposal, create a PowerPoint presentation
defending their position, and present it to the group.
2. Expert Interviews
Introduce participants to interviews with assessment experts and follow these steps:
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Divide the class into groups and have them read several expert interviews.
Have the class discuss each expert interview, and ask participants, "Did you agree with the speaker? Why or why
not?"
In groups, have participants discuss the views of the interviewees with whom they most agreed or disagreed and
explain their position.
3. Assessment for Understanding
Introduce the concept of performance assessment to the class, by having participants read "Assessment for
Understanding" and then follow these steps:
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Ask participants, "What did you think of the article?"
Have participants discuss the section or sections of the article that affected them most, and ask them, "Why did
they affect you?"
Have participants take a position, either pro or con, on the assessment model, create a PowerPoint presentation
defending their position, and present it to the group.
4. Measuring What Counts: Memorization vs. Understanding
Have participants read the article "Measuring What Counts: Memorization Versus Understanding" and then
discuss these questions:
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What three elements factor into the creation of a project?
What are some of the benefits, according to the article, of project-based learning?
What are recommendations for beginning projects in the classroom?
5. Project-Based Lesson and Rubric
The following activities are designed to give participants experience in creating a project-based lesson and a
model rubric for assessing it:
Present Your Idea
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Write a reflective paragraph and present it to the group.
List projects that would be likely to engage your students.
Create a chart or PowerPoint presentation to present your project ideas to the group.
Design a Project and Rubric
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Choose a project idea.
Choose a topic or question for the project-based lesson.
Develop the objectives of the project and the tasks.
Design a rubric for the project-based lesson.
Decide whether the rubric is going to be an example of a teacher-created rubric or one created by both the
teacher and the students.
Create a rubric. (If word processing the rubric, it is suggested that you create a table within the document.)
Creating Rubrics
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Create a rubric using the site's suggestions.
Visit the 4Teachers.org RubiStar tool.
Create a rubric using the Web site's templates.
Present the Rubric
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Present to the group the rubric you have chosen to use.
How does it fit the assessment needs of your students?
How does it fit your assessment needs as a teacher?
Discuss Rubrics
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Discuss why it is a teacher-created rubric or one created by both the teacher and the students.
What thoughts went into the process of creating the rubric?
Why would one use rubric templates?
List the pros and cons of using a template.
When would you be more likely to use a rubric that did not employ a template?
SUGGESTED READINGS
Edutopia.org articles and videos:
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"Toward Genuine Accountability: The Case for a New State Assessment System"
"Assessment for Understanding: Taking a Deeper Look"
Assessment Overview: Beyond Standardized Testing
"Measuring What Counts: Memorization Versus Understanding"
"Assessment: No Single Measure Tells the Story of Student Achievement"
"Appropriate Assessments: The Need to Reinvigorate Science Education"
"Geometry in the Real World: Students as Architects"
Academics Meets Architecture: Applying Math Skills to a Real-World Problem
"Urban Academy: Where Testing Is Anything But Standard"
Urban Academy
"Grant Wiggins: Defining Assessment"
"Studies in Success: A Survey of Assessment Research"
External Links:
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Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators: "Assessment & Rubric Information"
Creating a Rubric for a Given Task
RubiStar
Interactive Classroom: Creating Rubrics Through Negotiable Contracting and Assessment (ERIC)
Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards Through Classroom Assessment (PDF) (Phi Delta Kappan)